Dictionaries and glossaries

In a nutshell

Dictionaries contain standard translations of general terminology. Dictionaries are used for ad hoc searches of terminology.

Glossaries contain user-defined translations of specific terminology. Glossaries are used for automatic searches of terminology.

The translator toolkit contains separate tabs for Dictionary and Glossary. While both dictionary and glossary contain multilingual translations, they are used differently during translation.

Dictionaries

Dictionaries contain standard translations of general terminology.

Dictionary translations come from Google's database of multilingual terms. They are used for lookups of common words during translation. To see a definition for a word or phrase, click the Dictionary tab, enter your word or phrase, and click Search. If Google has a translation for the word, it will retrieve that information and display it.

Glossaries

Glossaries contain custom, user-defined multilingual terminology.

Glossary translations come from Google Translator Toolkit users. They are used to promote translation consistency across your translations or with your collaborators. As you translate each segment, we automatically check each word for matches in your glossary. If we find a match, we highlight the match in the segment. Hover your mouse over the glossary match to view the translation or click the Glossary tab to view details like part-of-speech and description.